Trials of Michael Carpenter
by LynchingVerse
Summary: Michael Carpenter must take his next step to become worthy of becoming a true Knight of the Dark Tower in the depths of Faerie. Originally by Cracklord
1. Chapter 1

It was unlike anything he could have imagined. He stood within a vast, subterranean hall, a magic, frozen realm that stretched in all directions. Spheres of light bobbed gently through the air, radiating a diffuse glow akin to predawn. The earthen roof curved far overhead, and the vast roots of Yggdrasil hung down low, entwined to form pillars that came down to the ground. Other roots wound around the sloping, distant walls, forming archways that led of into other halls, deep beneath the world.

The crust of snow crunched beneath Michael's heavy workboots as he turned around, gazing in wonder. There was a world here, self contained and apart from the one above, gently sloping hills rising to meet the walls all around, forming a natural valley in the center of the otherworldy hall. A wide, frozen lake spread out in the depression, it's surface mirror-like and gleaming, and in the center rose a small island.  
>Michael found himself drawn there. Sheathing his sword, he began to walk, trudging through the powdery snow. His eyes were locked on the island. It was lightly wooded, its trees leafless and barren, and a winding path led to a low rocky headland jutting out from the ice.<p>

The snow was knee-deep, but Michael picked up the pace, urged on by some indefinable impulse alike those when God had called him away. His joint's ached with the cold, and his limp was growing more pronounced, yet Michael hurried down the powdery slope, passing through the icy woods. The land leveled out as he came to the land's edge, and without delay he stepped out upon it's frozen surface.  
>The air was cold and crisp and still as he reached the island. He climbed a twisting path through ice-shawled trees, and passed through a stone archway carved with ivy and spiraling runes. He walked slowly out onto the low rocky headland, the highest point on the little island.<p>

A circular dais was situated there, and it was to this that Michael was drawn. He hardly dared breathe as he approached. An elegantly designed stone plinth was carved into the dais, and lying upon in was...  
>"You should see it in summer. When my King is wed to Titania flowers bloom, the air is heavy with the scent of milk and honey, and all is well. Yet the cold has a beauty of it's own, or so says Mab, and for now, she is queen." The voice is low and pleasant, the turn of phrase old fashioned and faintly sinister yet there is no feeling of darkness about it.<p>

A tall, grim figure stood amongst the snow, built with the dangerous suppleness of a panther. His skin white as milk, as was his hair hair that hung down to his shoulders, and his features that of the elfin. He bears a scar extending from the topmost ridge of one cheek to the other and crossing the bridge of the nose, with several perpendicular lines etched along it as well, and his eyes were a tawny, golden color, like that of a wolf, yet his features were more foxlike, cunning and sly, though not without a strange and indefinable nobility. His right forearm was missing, shorn away in some ancient battle, but a silver hand had replaced it, and it seemed to suit him fine. He wore white, and a light coat of silvered mail beneath a plain surcoat, but despite the make of them he was without ornamentation.

"I am Nuada Airgetlám, king of the Tuatha Dé Danann and servant of The Hunter, who we shall not speak of lest his attention be drawn here." He lowers his head a moment, then raises his eyes beneath lowered brows, and sinks into the prelude to a fighting stance, his body like a loaded trap waiting to be sprung. "As well as Oberon's champion in these matters."

Michael faces him squarely, planting his body like a mountain that refuses to bend, his hand well away from his sword, though he knows he shall need it in a moment. "I know of you, and your king. I have no quarrel with either." 

Nuada nods. Were he to encounter this man anywhere else, he would kill him the moment he saw him, but here he must serve his function. "No, though your people are in his debt." When Michael looked in askance, Nuada elaborated. "Oberon paid the Erlkings weregeld, did he not? When John Taylor was informed, he offered his thanks to the King. While he may have been ignorant of the meaning, the words are an offer to repay. A debt Oberon has not forgotten."

Michael frowned at that. And Taylor had no idea. He was in for a shock when they brought up that one. And they would, The fey always had their due. He fell silent, trying to think how to proceed.  
>It was a strange thing, in this age of rationality and fact, to be on a quest, but that's what he was doing. He'd left his family in the care of friends after the founding of the Order, and began his long journey, spurred on by the visions in his dreams, that had led, at long last, here.<p>

Though he did not know why. All he knew was that perhaps the success of the secret fight he would now live hung on his success here.

"I do. It is you who is lost. I am the arbiter of the trials. The rite of passage." 

"Which Trials?" Michael asked, but wasn't talking to the elf anymore. The cavern had faded away, and he stood in darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

He stood on an island, surrounded by bluebells, the air blanketed with fog. He could hear the roar of the ocean, crashing against the rocks just of the coast. The pebbled beach was strewn with the bones of thousands of men. Amidst the devastation strode a single figure, no more then a silhouette, quickly receding. "I walked the earth long before the coming of your short-lived race. And I shall continue to walk it long after you are all but a memory."

"Perhaps." Michael said noncommittally.

"I remember the coming of your people. I watched them as they first entered the Green. They were so full of fear. I laughed as their blood was first spilt on the forest floor. And I screamed my fury when our fate became entwined with theirs. They make promises to break them, hold us to compacts that they themselves never keep. It was all a mistake, allowing us to fade as we have, but it is of no matter. Their time shall soon come to an end."

"You are a pitiful creature. You are nothing but a slave to malice and resentment, consumed with bitterness and poison." Michael replied, watching Nuada carefully as he paced back and forth, hands still clasped around the hilt of his sword. He had seen the deadliness in Nuada, and the madness that ate away at him. He knew the elflord could turn on him in an instant. He did not intend to be taken unawares.

"We should have destroyed them! It was in our power. What could they offer us? We didn't need their protection, they needed us. But our kings feared their axes now of iron, and their fire, and so they withdrew. Now we are reduced to trading our magicks and secrets simply to exist in the world we left behind. They were ever weak-willed beings, filled with slyness and tricks. They ingratiated themselves with us, taking what knowledge could be gleaned and giving back little. And they caged us here, in the shadow-world, where all is dreams. Well we shall be free. We shall take back what was ours." He ceased his pacing, and faced Michael squarely.

"Leave this place, mortal." He says, his voice ice. "You are not welcome here."

"No." Michael replied. "It is by my Lord's will that I am here, and I shall not fail him."

"I know your heart, mortal. I know your hopes and desires. Here, nothing is hidden from me. I can guide you along the darkling paths that wend and twine. You could save your daughter from the darkness that threatens, even now." Another shape joins the pacing Elflord, alike and yet unalike. Angular, fine-boned features and glittering yellow eyes, the two were unmistakably twins, though one was soft where the other was hard. Their aristocratic features were scarred identically. Both were almost identical, neither to feminine or too masculine, and together the pair seemed disturbingly unreal.  
>"That is out of my hands." Michael replied.<p>

"Would you like to see her again? It is already underway. She's already killed your best friend. Why are you here, when that is where you ought to be? Is that not part of your duty? Is that not part of your sworn oath, even your beliefs?"

"Get out of my head." Michael said, never raising his voice but his hands gripping the handle of his sword hard enough that his muscles creaked.

"It's still not too late. Even after what was done to her, even after all she went through, it's not too late. The outcome of her life, and by extension the future of your world, hangs in balance." 

"Silence witch." His voice is rough with barely contained fury, the calmness he displayed before having fled in the face of this fresh assault. "Your heart is as rotten as your companions. Your threats mean nothing to me, no more then your temptations. But you must fear me, or you would not offer them. You fear me because you know my path is true."

"I do not lie."

"I believe you." He sounded calm again, his momentary fury quenched. It was easy to forget, but they were not his enemies. Merely the tools God had chosen to test him.

"It's easy to know in your head, but I don't believe your heart knows. Look there." She says, and points behind him.

He can't help it. He turns, to find only the trunk of an ancient oak tree, ancient and knotted and hung with moss. "I see nothing."

"Look again, oh Fist of God."

A wave of vertigo passed over him, but he soon realized he could see something. He aught to have been seeing trees and snow and the clear surface of the lake, but instead he could see..."No."

It is a bitter thing, to lose a child to evil, before one loses one to death.

"Yes. Why do you doubt it? Don't tell me you were so blinded you never saw what was in her. Never knew what dreams she truly dreamt. How can this be a surprise? Or is it just that you deluded yourself. That you chose not to see what was truly there." She affected a thoughtful look, her eyes glimmering with something unguessable. "What else have you hid from yourself? What else have you never allowed yourself to see?"

Micheal thinks about Molly. There had always been a darkness in her that she hid so well, an instability, a lack of peace. It wasn't that she didn't feel, it's that she felt to well. She couldn't distance herself from all the inequities of the world, or learn to accept them. They had been the first steps down a dark path, one he couldn't turn her away from.

And yet ahead the tunnel stretched, leading back to Chicago, back to his daughter, back to his family, back to his oh so short retirement. He could abandon this, make his way back and try to save her. That was where he ought to be. He had always put his duty to his God before his family, and perhaps these were the consequences.

His faith in God did not excuse him from accepting responsibility. It did not allow him to wash his hands of his daughter, to claim the choice was out of his hands. And it did not excuse blind obedience either.

It was with considerable reluctance that he turned away.

"No." He said, taking the blade and drawing it. It was not the holy blade he had bore as a knight of the Cross, it had not been so much as blessed, and yet the light of God filled him, guiding his arm and eliminating all doubt. "She made her choice. Just as I made mine. I will protect the innocent and fight wickedness where I may. My place is here."

Nuala stepped back, shocked, but her brother smiled a satisfied smile, and Michael realized that this is what he wanted from the beginning. "Then you are a fool, and I thank you." He said, stepping in front of his sister and reaching to his hip, where he removed his weapon with his metal hand, showing marvelous dexterity as he did. He swung the weapon, and by curious design it extended until it was a spear, which he pointed at Michael with evident pleasure and superlative skill. His eyes flared, and he drove the spear forward, the weapon singing through the air as it thrust towards Michael's chest.  
>Michael leaped out of the way, falling heavily to his knees and only just avoiding being skewered, but it was only the beginning. Nuada simply brought the spear in an arc, hitting him in the corner of his skull with the haft and sending him sprawling.<p>

He got to his feet quickly, blocking the fey's attack with his sword. He held it in two-hands, but even so was brought to his knees by the force of the blow. Desperate now he got to his feet and blocked the next blow, which shuddered up his arms and sent him reeling back two steps. And Nuada came on relentlessly, giving him no time to recover.

The elf was without a doubt the finest warrior he'd ever seen, his entire body a finely honed weapon that had been taken to the very peak of skill and conditioning his immortal body could sustain. Each blow followed perfectly from the next, expertly maneuvering him back with a timeless barrage of attacks, without pause and without remorse, and any of them would fell Michael were he a little slower.  
>Nuada may have been slight, but there was power in him, and every blow sent Michael reeling. His hands were numb from the jarring blows, and he had no time to even consider launching a riposte.<br>The rolling mist continued to build around them, cloaking the island completely, so that all that existed seemed to be the two of them. Nothing else mattered.

Michael franticly backtracked, using all his skill and battle-experience to remain alive for another few seconds. His arms were tiring, the heavy blade felt like a leaden weight in his arms, and increasingly he was failing to turn the elflords blows aside. He was yet to be wounded seriously yet, but it was only a matter of time, his right leg couldn't keep it up, and every drop of blood sapped away more of his strength.

Then he saw an opening. Turning himself rather then the expected parry, he avoided the thrust and swung his sword, pouring every ounce of strength he had left, his whole body thrown behind the strike.  
>Nuada ducked, the sword sailing over his head, then backhanded Michael who hit the ground, spitting blood. Scrambling, he threw himself aside to avoid the spear as it came again. The weapon sunk into the ground, and Michael was upright.<p>

His arms were aching, and he backed off, panic clawing at his heart. He put everything behind that blow, and it's timing was perfect. Yet Nuada had contemptuously avoided it. It was that moment he knew he was outmatched, that he would not win this fight no matter what he tried.  
>Well, so be it then.<p>

Clearing his mind, he pushed the fear aside and rose to meet the elflord. pale fire flickered along the edge of his sword, and he felt fresh vigor infuse his limbs.

With the name of God on his lips, he threw himself at the elf, thrusting and slashing. He feinted high and came low, swinging his blade in murderous arcs. Each blow was met by the spear, and the enchanted weapons came together again and again. He was losing momentum, and thereby losing the offensive. If Nuada began attacking again, he knew it was all over, and yet despite his best efforts he hadn't managed to land a blow.

Michael and the elf battled fiercely, Nuada dodging and weaving around Michael's strikes, Michael no longer giving ground. For a time it seemed that they would battle forever, a never-ending duel within the mists as time lost all meaning, and their blades were a blur as they cut and thrust.

No end was in sight, then understanding came on Michael in a rush and he stepped back, lowering his blade. "This is not a test of prowess." he said, shaking his head that he had not realized it earlier.  
>Nuada came on, lunging with his spear, and for a moment Michael moved to parry, then at the last moment he reversed his grip on his sword and thrust it into the earth, kneeling on one knee. He lowered his head, exposing the back of his neck, and closed his eyes.<p>

Nuada looked down, contempt and fury twisting his features into something ugly, and lifted his spear to kill the man, then something caught the corner of his eye. He turned, and his eyes widened.  
>"No." He said softly, as though he could deny it with the word. He held for a moment, looking as though he was resolving to kill Michael anyway and to hell with the consequences, then replaced his spear furiously and turned his back. "I will remember this, knight. Next time we meet, nothing will stay me. I shall be free to scatter your bones."<p>

Then he was gone. Michael opened his eyes, and they widened still further with shock. The mists parted before him, opening a passage through the fog. A beauteous figure rose from the lake, wreathed in light and garlanded with lilies. No ripple marked the lakes surface as she emerged. Her hair was bright and the color of sunlight, and her form was as pure as a vision from god. Tears ran unashamedly down Michael's cheeks. No power could have made him turn away at this moment. The Lady of The Lake floated towards Michael, her bare feet inches above the surface of the water.

Barely daring to breathe, Michael rose to his feet and stepped into the shallows to meet the figure, stretching out his faltering hands to take the chalice.

It was heavy, and he felt a strange tingle run up his arms. Looking down into the Holy Grail's fathomless depths, he saw something that filled him with joy. He saw hope, he saw prayers answered, and faith rewarded. He saw that as dark as the universe might be, every living being within was offered unconditional love.

He drew the chalice up to his lips, but hesitated a moment before drinking. It was said that only those pure of heart and devoid of any hint of taint upon their soul could drink from this cup.  
>Then he dismissed his doubts and took it to his lips.<p> 


End file.
